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Tuesday, August 14, 2012

How to Protect Your Smartphone from Police

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Supreme
Court of California disappointed many civil liberties advocates when they
reached a 5:2 decision in People versus Diaz. The police may search phones on
arrested persons without a search warrant. It’s particularly troubling. When
you think of how much personal information is stored on your phone in this day
and age, it’s both your best friend and could be your worst enemy if it gets
into the wrong hands.

Videos,
pictures, emails, text messages, contacts - all of your communications are in
this one little device. So with this ruling, should we just call privacy
completely dead? Or are there still a few tricks out there to keep your
personal information safe?

Let’s
paint the scenario. Let’s say, you get pulled over and arrested. You have your
phone on with you. Now cops really can do whatever they want with it. Under the
decision by the California Supreme Court along with, actually, a number of
other courts over the last few years, anytime you’re arrested by the police for
any reason, which could include unpaid parking tickets, driving without the
seatbelt, reckless driving – the police can take your phone. And once you’re in
custody under arrest, behind bars, they can spend hours trying to search
through your phone. Anything they find can be used against you in court.

And
that’s really scary. This tiny thing that you carry around with you, it holds
so much of your personal information, every email, every text message, every
picture, every video. It’s even scarier if we think how much we depend on those
little things.

The
courts have dealt with things like pagers for a while, but that was usually a
couple of phone numbers. It’s completely different with phones. It’s incredible
how much data we store on our smartphones.

The
actual initial court decisions allowed this to happen to a thing like a
cigarette pack. But today we’re talking about a phone. A smart phone like an
iPhone contains your papers; the effects of the digital age, the things that
you would once keep at home in a locked file cabinet in your desk. It’s all now
vulnerable to law enforcement search without a court order, without a warrant
at all. And
it’s unclear what does it mean for the phone to be on your person. Does it
count if it’s on the passenger’s seat, or on the console, or even in the trunk?
It’s never really been tested.

It
just works this way – if the phone immediately associated with your person –
they can search it, no question asked, no need for what’s called exigent
circumstances. But if it’s in your control but not immediately associated with
your person – they can’t search it. If it’s in your luggage, they probably
cannot search it unless they have a serious reason to think you’re going to
destroy data on it. The precedents on this are little murky, because it’s such
a new and untested area. Probably for a seatbelt or reckless driving arrest, if
it’s in your glove compartment, luggage – they probably can’t search it. If
it’s in your purse, however, next to you – maybe even in the seat next to you,
or definitely in your pocket, then they can search it. So
the goal is to get it basically as far away as you can from your person, in
some separate object.

As
to password on your phone, in this case the officer can’t just push a button
and instantly access all the information. They can ask you, and they can even
lie to you. They can say: “If you tell us your password, it’s going to help you
when we go before the judge.” Remember, cops, generally speaking, don’t have to
tell you the truth.

However,
and this is important, they cannot force you to hand over your password. They
may ask, they may try to persuade you, but if they do force you to hand it over
– then they’ve gone over the line. However, if you voluntarily disclose it –
then that’s free reign for them.

Here
is a bit of advice for everyone: if you’re all worried about police looking
into your phone, whether or not you committed a crime, which you probably don’t
know even if you have, given how many laws there are now, you should definitely
password-protect your phone. It’s a great way to keep it safe. Mobile security
software and especially encryption software
may be of great help too.

A
lot of Americans are probably saying: “I’ve nothing to hide, go ahead, and
search my phone.” But a lot of us are probably guilty of committing crimes and
we don’t even know it. There are so many laws these days. That’s something that
is called Overcriminalization. Every year thousands of new offences are added
to the books, a lot of them don’t require criminal intent.

You
can have no idea you’re doing something illegal. Then there are these horror
stories like: a girl is arrested in New York City subway for eating a French
fry, a woman was arrested simply for not filing the right paperwork, a
grandmother. You can be arrested for a lot of things. It’s incredibly easy for
the cops to find something you’ve done that’s illegal.

Not
only that, if they search your phone and they find anything incriminating –
such as the guy in California, Diaz. They filed the text message that said: “6 4
80,” and that’s all it said. The police officers testified that it involved
drug deal – 6 pills for 80 dollars. That, along with other factors, was enough
for a criminal conviction. So, it’s really hard to know for sure that there’s
nothing on your phone that might land you behind bars, given how many laws we
have.

Again,
after creating and enabling strong password, the next piece of advice is to
actually go ahead and encrypt your phone. The problem with the
password-protected phone is that it’s not encrypted. There are these tools that
police can plug into your phone and in 5 minutes all the data is off your phone
on their computer and they have free reign to search it.

Encrypting
is the only surefire way to make sure the police can’t access it. And they
cannot force you to turn over the key. No matter what they say, you have the
right to remain silent; theycannon force you to disclose any information under the 5th amendment.

[Guest Author]

--> Alex Lamman is a 25
years old software engineer, snowboarder and just a loving father from
Germany.He is Internet security addict
and helps to run Privacy PC – a website
which guides you through the news, reviews, tips and software needed for
protection in all critical privacy and security areas.